Tuesday, February 5, 2019

Rush hour library

The library is hopping. Action swirls around me. It's an early evening
on a midweek Winter day and I am at the front desk of my library. So it
begs the question:

If it's so busy how am I writing this?

Accounting for the fact that I have already been interrupted 37 times in
the course of writing what little you have read so far, there is
something significant to my still being able to do this while rush hour
churns through my library. Ten or fifteen years
ago at this library the idea that I would have more than 30 seconds of
uninterrupted time would have been laughable. I used to have the kind of
three minute conversations with my co-workers that I have now, except
they would have to be broken up into one or
two sentence snippets and parsed out over an hour or two. Sometimes there would
merely be a futile attempt at conversation. The whole discussion would
just go nowhere for the whole time, like, for example, this:

"I went to this great cheese shop on Thursday!"

"Oh, really. What was... oh, hold that thought."

...(work)

"So you were telling me about the cheese shop..."

"Right, but, wait."

...(work)

"What were we talking about again?"

"Was it the White Stripes?"

"Hmm. No."

"Wait, hold that thought."

...(work)

"Oh, I know what we were talking about. You were going to tell me about the cheese shop."

"Right! I went to this great cheese shop Thursday!"

"Hold that thought."

...(work)

It took an awfully long time to learn much about my co-workers in
conversations like that, but one thing a person had doing the kind of
work we were doing was a lot of time, heavy time.

So, right. What changed?

In addition to the automated check in machine's prodigious
contributions, library patrons can do all sorts of things for themselves
now. They can check out their own books. They can look up their own
records. They can renew online at home. We used have to do
everything for them. Now we only have to do the strange and difficult things for them.

I was telling my young co-worker about all this while we were working at the front desk.

4 comments:

You nailed it...this is exactly why I retired when I did: "Now we only have to do the strange and difficult things for them." My favorite parts of the job were chatting with patrons, especially kids, when they checked in books, and checking out their books on the other end of the counter. Well, and shelving of course. And pulling requests. Even emptying the bookdrop. But you are welcome to all of the strange and difficult bits!

I still feel weird checking out the books myself, and take extra delight in moseying over to the reserved book section and then thanking the librarian for shelving it.

In my profession I kind of long for the days when you had class, a few office hours a week, and if a student had questions, she could also stay after class. If there was an emergency, there might be a phone message at work.

Now they send emails. Lots of them. And there are all sorts of district emails announcing a million different things like possible transfers for the music department in our sister college, or a speech somewhere, or or or. Funnily enough, many faculty have to put the hours they *won't* be answering emails on their syllabi.

Hmm, I would have been too shy to contact any of my college professors outside of class, no matter what the method. Though if what I've gleaned from the library holds, ten percent of your students would generate 90 percent of the emails.

Also I can see how the old days might be nicer in the classic professions, like Doctor, or Professor, or Librarian, but down here in the trenches plusses have outweighed the minuses at least two to one.

If you were wondering, yes, you should comment. Not only does it remind me that I must write in intelligible English because someone is actually reading what I write, but it is also a pleasure for me since I am interested in anything you have to say.

I respond to pretty much every comment. It's like a free personalized blog post!

One last detail: If you are commenting on a post more than two weeks old I have to go in and approve it. It's sort of a spam protection device. Also, rarely, a comment will go to spam on its own. Give either of those a day or two and your comment will show up on the blog.

Not so entertaining sort of legal exclaimer that seems wise to post if you think about it

I in no way speak on behalf of or in any way for the Library I work for, though if they would like me to I am sure we can come to an agreement.

My blog is not written or worked on during paid time and if it ever appears to be that is only for narrative umph and to reflect on my thought processes and experience as things happened.

Things here are fictionalized and obscured sometimes, and though I stand behind my portrayl of the spirit and feel of things it would be wrong to ascribe too much to a specific Library, event, or person.